Confessions of a Workaholic
A retired man reflects on his work life and employee burnout.
By Don Tassone
When The Times of London invited essays on the topic of “What’s wrong with the world?” G. K. Chesterton in a letter offered his famous terse response, “I am.”
I set out to write an article on employee burnout — the biggest threat to building an engaged workforce today. I began collecting statistics on how burnout is sabotaging workforce retention and how organizations, despite the well-documented costs of employee turnover, are more apt to invest in recruiting new employees than retaining existing talent.
But then I began thinking about my own career: 31 years in high-pressure jobs for a highly successful company. I was burned out. But why? It’s tempting to blame my company or the nature of the type of work I chose to do — public relations.
If I’m honest with myself, my burnout was largely self-inflicted.
Not that I was aiming to hurt myself. I had simply convinced myself that “consistently exceeding expectations” was the secret to my success.
I became an iron man, able to take on any assignment, respond promptly to every email message, start my days with conference calls with colleagues in China and end my days with conference…
